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Opinion: Guest Opinions

Doug Conarroe: Eliminate Lafayette's curbside composting program

By Doug Conarroe

Posted:
11/14/2015 07:40:40 PM MST

Blanca Castruita, left, fills out paperwork with the help of Eco Cycle's Ivan Ramirez as he canvassed the Lafayette Gardens neighborhood in Lafayette in February to talk to residents about the city's composting program. (Jeremy Papasso / Staff Photographer)

Lafayette Mayor Christine Berg's Nov. 8 letter to the editor gives a passionate argument for new EPA limitations on the release of methane, a greenhouse gas (GHG) that's emitted by producing, transporting and storing oil and gas. But, as I'll argue, Lafayette's curbside composting program is doing more harm to our environment than anything related to our town's long-dormant oil and gas extraction activities — the last oil well being drilled here in 1997.

Lafayette's curbside composting program kicked into full gear earlier this year. Yard waste, compostable goods and food waste begins the long, GHG-spewing journey at the curb (or alley). Placed by the Lafayette trash customer into a plastic, non-biodegradable container, the organic waste is loaded onto a fleet of Republic Services trucks, dispatched from Commerce City, with a single purpose of picking up organic material for composting. These trucks were not on the street (and contributing carbon dioxide, a GHG) before the program started, and drive 30 miles round trip from Republic Services' local headquarters.

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Single-task trucks pick up the compost via multiple stops and starts (2,000-3,000), spewing CO2 the whole way. Lafayette's organic material is then consolidated and transported 100 miles round trip via CO2-spewing trucks to Eaton, where CO2-spewing heavy equipment mechanically turns the large windrow piles (it has to be churned periodically to facilitate decomposition).

Mayor Berg said that methane is 86 times more damaging to the environment than carbon dioxide emissions, while the city of Lafayette's 2009 Energy Sustainability Master Plan says that methane is 21 times more harmful than carbon dioxide, while nitrous oxide emissions are 310 times more harmful.

We do know that if the organics placed curbside were simply buried in a landfill — instead of composted in a distant industrial facility — the material would be robbed of oxygen while biodegrading (anaerobic digestion) and emit almost no nitrous oxide. As the landfilled organics biodegrade, they do release methane, but those same landfills — including Front Range — are capturing the methane and generating electricity.

The feel-good capstone of Lafayette's GHG-heavy and environmentally damaging composting collection program comes full cycle when another CO2-spewing truck hauls the "finished" compost 50 miles from Eaton to Lafayette for distribution to residents.

Add to this homegrown climate change acceleration program the fact that city data shows Republic Services trash/recycling/composting trucks weigh on average 20 percent more when loaded than Western Disposal's trucks (the previous trash collecting company) and that Republic uses tire chains on these heavier trucks in winter (while Western rarely did), causing exacerbated wear and tear to Lafayette's aging infrastructure.

Not to mention the detrimental socioeconomic impacts of the curbside composting program. In 2013, about 5 percent of Lafayette households had income below the poverty level. Remember that half of Lafayette's roughly 10,000 households, those that belong to an HOA, are exempted from the curbside composting program. Since these highest-income households — which are the ones that generate the most waste, organic or otherwise — are exempt, this means that the burden for supporting curbside compost collections shifts to households that can't afford it. As a result, a full 10 percent of the curbside composting program is being subsidized by households that are at or below the poverty level and, sadly, can't opt out.

So what are the less costly, lower carbon-footprint alternatives to curbside composting in Lafayette?

• Don't bag your lawn clippings, just have your lawnmower do the work and return the grass blades to the place they sprouted.

• Compost your own tree leaves and other yard and household organic waste, in your own compositor in your own yard. Or collect and then place your yard waste curbside utilizing the same twice-yearly city curbside collection program that's existed for decades.

• Send everything else (except recyclables) to the landfill, just as you did before this GHG-heavy curbside program started. If your organic waste was simply hauled five miles to the landfill like other trash, in the same truck that picks up the trash, this would eliminate the horde of dedicated CO2-spewing trucks hauling the compost far and wide.

A balanced argument for both sides of the curbside composting debate — landfilling versus industrial composting — can be found at waste360.com. Search for "Food Fight" by Allan Gerlat.

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